ISRAELI MILITARY FORCIBLY STOPS AID BOAT TO GAZA – AGAIN : Free Gaza
WRITTEN BY GRETA BERLIN | 05 JUNE 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For More Information, please contact:
Free Gaza Cyprus: Greta Berlin or Mary Hughes
tel: +357 99 187275 or +357 96 383 809, < friends@freegaza.org >
Free Gaza Ireland: Niamh Moloughney
tel: +353 (0)85 7747257 or +353 (0)91 472279, < freegazaireland@gmail.com >
Perdana Global Peace Organisation, Malaysia: Ram Karthigasu
tel: +60 1222 70159, < ramkarthigasu@gmail.com >
(Off the Gaza coast, 5 JUNE) – Just before 9am GMT this morning, the Israeli military forcibly siezed the Irish-owned humanitarian relief ship, the MV Rachel Corrie, from delivering over 1000 tons of medical and construction supplies to besieged Gaza. For the second time in less then a week, Israeli naval commandos stormed an unarmed aid ship, brutally taking its passengers hostage and towing the ship toward Ashdod port in Southern Israel. It is not yet known whether any of the Rachel Corrie’s passengers were killed or injured during the attack, but they are believed to be unharmed.
The Corrie carried 11 passengers and 9 crew from 5 different countires, mostly Ireland and Malaysia. The passengers included Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire, Parit Member of the Malaysian Parliament Mohd Nizar Zakaria, and former UN Assistant Secretary General, Denis Halliday. Nine international human rights workers were killed on Monday when Israeli commandos violently stormed the Turkish aid ship, Mavi Marmara and five other unarmed boats taking supplies to Gaza. Prior to being taken hostage by Israeli forces, Derek Graham, an Irish coordinator with the Free Gaza Movement, stated that: “Despite what happened on the Mavi Marmara earlier this week, we are not afraid.
The 1200-ton cargo ship was purchased through a special fund set up by former Malaysian Prime Minister and Perdana Global Peace Organisation (PGPO) chairman Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. The ship was named after an American human rights worker, killed in 2003 when she was crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer in the Gaza Strip. Its cargo included hundreds of tons of medical equipment and cement, as well as paper from the people of Norway, donated to UN-run schools in Gaza.
According to Denis Halliday: “We are the only Gaza-bound aid ship left out here. We’re determined to deliver our cargo.” The Rachel Corrie had been part of the Freedom Flotilla, a 40-nation effort to break through Israel’s illegal blockade, before being forced to drop off late last week due to suspicious mechanical problems.
The attack on the Rachel Corrie may spell trouble for Israel’s relationship with Ireland. The Irish government had formally requested Israel allow the ship to reach Gaza. On 1 June, the Irish parliament also passed an all-party motion condemning Israel’s use of military force against civilian aid ships, and demanding “an end to the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza.”
Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire summed up the hopes of this joint Irish-Malaysian effort to overcome Israel’s cruel blockade by saying: “We are inspired by the people of Gaza whose courage, love and joy in welcoming us, even in the midst of such suffering gives us all hope. They represent the very best of humanity, and we are all privileged to be given the opportunity to support them in their nonviolent struggle for human dignity, and freedom. This trip will again highlight Israel’s criminal blockade and illegal occupation. In a demonstration of the power of global citizen action, we hope to awaken the conscience of all.”
—
Passengers aboard the Rachel Corrie include:
Ahmed Faizal bin Azumu, human rights worker, Malaysia
Matthias Chang, attorney, author & human rights worker, Malaysia
Derek Graham, Free Gaza Ireland
Jenny Graham, Free Gaza Ireland
Denis Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary General, Ireland
Mohd Jufri Bin Mohd Judin, journalist, Malaysia
Shamsul Akmar Musa Kamal, PGPO representative, Malaysia
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Ireland
Abdul Halim Bin Mohamed, journalist, Malaysia
Fiona Thompson, film-maker, Ireland
The Hon. Mohd Nizar Zakaria, Parit Member of Parliament, Malaysia
Erdogan to Netanyahu: You shall not kill ! Lo Tir’tsach !
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan says to Netanyahu: you shall not kill in 3 languages: Turkish, English and Hebrew.
You shall not kill ! Lo Tir’tsach ! Öldürmeyeceksin !
Erdogan to Netanyahu: You shall not kill ! Lo Tir’tsach ! Hamas is not a terror organisation
Gaza flotilla attack: Israeli ambassador to Madrid tries to play down deaths: The Guardian
Consul intimates Spain should focus more on domestic road traffic fatalities, and aligns activists with Madrid train bombers
Thermal imaging footage of the Israeli raid on the Gaza aid flotilla ship, in which nine people died. The Israeli ambassador to Madrid suggests Spain should be more worried about domestic road traffic fatalities. Photograph: guardian.co.uk
Israel’s ambassador in Madrid provoked outrage this morning by suggesting Spaniards should worry more about the number of people dying on the roads every weekend and less about the nine people killed in his country’s raid on the Gaza flotilla.
“Yes, nine people have died. But 155 died in a terrorist attack in India last week. Who cares about that? Have you heard anything about it? Twenty-three Spaniards died on the roads this weekend,” Raphael Schutz told El Periódico newspaper.
An embassy spokesman, Lior Haiat, said comments had been taken out of context and the ambassador had been referring to Spanish media coverage. “Of course we care about any deaths,” said Haiat, who claimed the flotilla carried 100 Turkish mercenaries. “Even when they are mercenaries and terrorists.”
In an interview published in Spanish, Schutz compared the Gaza flotilla activists to the radical Islamist train bombers who killed 191 people on Madrid commuter trains in 2004.
“We are talking about people on board [the flotilla] who are connected to al-Qaida,” he said when El Periódico’s interviewer pointed out that the Madrid attacks had been carried out by al-Qaida-inspired terrorists. “Fifty of the people who left Turkey are known for their connections with Hamas, with al-Qaida. Are these people pacifists?”. They hide behind a few Europeans.”
Israeli PR machine won Gaza flotilla media battle: The Guardian CiF
Reporting by mainstream media on the Gaza flotilla attack was unbalanced and dominated by Israel’s edited version of events
The provenance of photographs of weapons supposedly found on the boats has been questioned in the blogosphere. Photograph: AP
From the moment that the Israeli naval commandos launched their attack on the flotilla aiming to break the siege of Gaza by carrying humanitarian aid to the territory, the struggle by both sides to dominate how the media covered the events – a struggle that began days in advance of the 4am attack on Monday – entered a completely new phase.
Soon after the commandos landed on the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish ship carrying more than 600 of the activists, the live satellite broadcasts from the vessel were cut. From that point on, the Israeli authorities seized almost complete control of how evidence of what was taking place could be made public. Video of the last footage broadcast by the journalists on board was immediately available from sources such as al-Jazeera and the IHH (the Turkish Foundation for Freedoms and Human Rights and Humanitarian Relief), but it showed a very confusing picture: there were badly injured passengers, yet it was impossible to know how they had been injured.
What the world has been watching since then is either edited video shot by the Israelis or other video shot by activists, confiscated by the Israelis and subsequently edited and made available through Israeli sources.
In an operation reminiscent of the first week or so of the Israeli offensive against Gaza in winter 2008-2009, the Israeli PR machine succeeded in getting the major news outlets to focus on its version of events and to use the Israeli authorities’ discourse for a crucial 48 hours. (One example of how this was being done is a leaked, sophisticated briefing paper with key talking points, compiled using official government sources and pro-government Israeli media, issued through the World Zionist Organisation on 1 June.)
This time, however, commentators in the Israeli media, on the left and the right, were immediately slamming the commando attack as a failure. The repeated screening of the video, taken from an Israeli assault craft, of the commandos abseiling down ropes onto the Mavi Marmara and then being set upon by the activists waiting for them on the deck, became the defining image of the capture of the boats. Posted by the IDF on YouTube, by Wednesday it had attracted more than 600,000 views.
The activists’ actions were described by Israeli spokespersons as a premeditated terrorist attack by al-Qaida sympathisers, using clubs, knives and guns, carried out with the intention of “lynching” the commandos who were carrying out an entirely legal and peacefully executed operation.
This Israeli version of events was very often given an uncritical airing. The fact that the video was a selected and edited segment, that the activists who witnessed what happened were being held incommunicado, that every bit of recorded evidence they may have had in their possession was being confiscated – this context was rarely highlighted, with BBC online and radio coverage particularly weak in this respect.
Of course, the media were not responsible for the Israeli clampdown – which continued even after the activists began to be seen in public being taken into detention at the Israeli port of Ashdod and when they were being deported – but there could certainly have been more attention drawn to the imbalance in the sources from which the media were obtaining their information. Even after first-hand accounts started to be broadcast, there seemed to be a belittling of their validity by describing eye-witnesses simply as “activists” or “pro-Palestinians” when some were writers, members of parliament and journalists.
By late Tuesday afternoon, Israel had still not provided a list of names or locations of the injured; there was no official number or list of the deceased; no official count of the numbers of the detainees and their locations; no report on the legal status of the wounded at the IPS medical facility and at hospitals across the country and extremely limited access to the wounded. And those arrested, detained or in hospital were still being denied unrestricted access to lawyers, relatives and consular representatives.
But once the testimony of the activists became available and the blogosphere got its teeth into the visual evidence, from whatever source, an alternative picture quickly emerged and the mainstream media struggled to keep up.
Prior to the landing of the commandos, the boats were probably softened up with rubber bullets, smoke bombs, tear gas; the provenance is in question of pictures of weapons supposedly found on the boats and posted on Flickr by the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs; the Americans appeared to confirm that there was no evidence to suggest that IHH was a terrorist organisation with links to al-Qaida. And the Israeli army all but admitted that the activists did not have guns of their own before the raid.
The truth is, however, that after five days, the mainstream media have moved on (the attack on the Gaza flotilla is no longer featured as a top story in the news box on the BBC’s front page). The news imbalance may have been partly redressed, but the Israeli version of the events and the presentation of legal arguments to justify Israel’s actions by friendly commentators continues to occupy significant media space. And given the fact that virtually all the visual evidence is now in Israeli hands, it’s almost inconceivable that we will ever know precisely what happened. At this stage, it seems fanciful to believe that any Israeli-based investigation will make available all the raw footage Israel has in its possession.
I suspect that the government of Binyamin Netanyahu and those responsible for the relentless effort invested in media management will judge their PR onslaught as a success, in spite of the fact that many Israelis and Israel’s supporters will rail at the media for being biased. That this is so only further confirms how blinkered and foolish the Israeli government has become.
Far from generating much sympathy for Israel’s action, the video images of the assault on the commandos only deepens the impression of an Israeli military as weak, unprepared and pathetic. It confirms that the decision to undertake such a disastrous action showed “hubris, poor intelligence work, and determined inability to learn from experience”.
And the fact that so much attention is paid in Israel to the PR and media implications, with even some critical commentators there viewing the action as right and only the PR result a disaster, is surely deeply troubling evidence, albeit not exactly new, of the lack of a moral compass among the country’s leadership.
Israeli troops take over Gaza aid ship Rachel Corrie: BBC
Page last updated at 11:10 GMT, Saturday, 5 June 2010 12:10 UK
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Israeli troops say they have taken control of an aid ship trying to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s military says soldiers boarded the Irish-owned Rachel Corrie from the sea and did not meet any resistance.
It says the ship is now being taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod. There has been no word from those on board.
The incident comes five days after nine people were killed in clashes when troops boarded a Turkish aid ship, prompting international criticism.
Israel says it will question those on board at the port and transfer the aid to the Gaza Strip by land after checking the cargo for banned items.
There are five Irish and six Malaysian pro-Palestinian activists, plus several crew, on the boat.
The Rachel Corrie is named after a US college student who was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer as she protested over house demolitions in Gaza in 2003.
Israel has blockaded Gaza since 2007, when the Islamist Hamas movement seized control of the territory.
‘Full compliance’
The 1,200 tonne cargo ship was boarded about 16 nautical miles (30km) off the Israeli coast.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said there “was full compliance from the crew and passengers on board”.
The ship had previously ignored repeated requests to change course, the Israeli military said.
The Rachel Corrie is carrying hundreds of tonnes of aid, including wheelchairs, medical supplies and cement. Construction materials are banned from entering Gaza by Israel, which says they could be used for military purposes by Hamas.
The sea-borne mission has been organised by the Cyprus-based Free Gaza Movement, a coalition of pro-Palestinian groups and human rights organisations.
Israel came under fierce criticism after its troops shot dead nine people during a violent confrontation with those on board the Turkish Mavi Marmara in the early hours of Monday
Israel says its commandos were attacked with weapons, including knives, and opened fire in self-defence. Activists on the ship say troops shot at them without provocation.
Report: Erdogan considering visiting Gaza to ‘break blockade’: Haaretz
Turkish PM may visit Gaza, ask Turkish Navy to accompany another aid flotilla, according to Lebanese newspaper; Turkish military opposes cutting security ties with Israel.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is weighing the possibility of traveling to the Gaza Strip in order to “break the Israeli blockade,” the Lebanese newspaper al-Mustaqbal reported on Saturday, according to Army Radio.
Erdogan reportedly raised the idea in conversations with close associates and even informed the United States of his intention to ask the Turkish Navy to accompany another aid flotilla to Gaza. The Americans asked Erdogan to delay his plans, in light of tensions on the region, the Lebanese report said.
According to the report, Erdogan is under intense political pressure to cancel security agreements with Israel. The Turkish military establishment, however, strongly opposes the idea of cutting security ties with Israel.
Erdogan has fiercely criticized Israeli for Monday’s raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, in which nine people, all Turkish citizens, were killed.
Hamas must reshape itself: The Guardian
By David Hearst
Fatah is too weak to deal with Israel – Palestine needs a strong leadership that is ready to negotiate
Military planners have taken to using the language of landscape gardeners. They talk disturbingly of shaping the environment. Would-be Capability Browns, orchestrating the arrival of thousands of US marines in Kandahar, do not speak of the battle but of the “process” to come. One wonders who, in a year’s time, is going to be processed by whom.
In Israel the same misplaced confidence in military planning was evident in the operation to land hundreds of naval commandos on ships packed with pro-Palestinian activists in the middle of the night. The name they gave to what became one of the most shaming operations in the history of Israel’s special forces said it all: Operation Sea Breeze.
The question arising from this week’s body count is not whether Israel can shape the environment, but whether it can respond to the pressures of being reshaped by it. The rules of the game are changing: overwhelming force no longer guarantees the right outcome. Turks, not Arabs, have taken up the cudgels of the fight to end the occupation; Palestinians are increasingly looking away from the air-conditioned offices in Ramallah for moral leadership and casting nervous glances at Gaza City. Call the Hamas-run regime what you will, but beseiged Gaza remains a potent political symbol.
In the absence of free elections, there is no way of reading the straws in the wind, except to say that outside the West Bank that wind is blowing in one direction: away from Fatah. The most important Palestinian occupant of the doomed convoy was a man called Sheikh Raed Salah, one of the founders of the Islamic Movement in Israel, a campaigner on East Jerusalem and a popular former mayor of his home town Umm al-Fahm, where he was elected with 70% of the vote. He is currently under house arrest in Israel, but had he been killed in the Israeli operation – and he has since alleged that Israeli commandos tried to kill him – it would have been Hamas, not Fatah, flags flying over Umm al-Fahm. The Fatah-run Palestinian Authority is one of the main sponsors of the siege of Gaza, and is still paying tens of thousands of its former employees in Gaza not to turn up for work for the government there.
Fatah is having trouble in the refugee camps of Beirut and southern Lebanon too. President Abbas recently had to recall to Ramallah a Fatah commander of 15 years’ standing. There are several versions why Brigadier Sultan Abu al-Aynayn had to go, after gunfights broke out in the largest camp, Ain al-Hilweh, between Fatah and an extremist Salafi Sunni Palestinian group. But however you cut it, the loss of a man who dominated the camps for so long is a blow.
In the Israeli prisons, in the refugee camps, Fatah no longer enjoys the hold it once had, so that if a deal on the borders of a Palestinian state were cut between Abbas and Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, it would be questionable as to what it would be worth, especially if it fell short of the two other core demands: East Jerusalem and the right of return of Palestinian refugees. Senior figures in Hamas’s external leadership in Beirut and Damascus are confident the proximity talks brokered by the US will get nowhere. They say the gap between the most Netanyahu can offer and the minimum even a weakened Palestinian interlocutor such as Abbas can accept is too wide to bridge. For Hamas, what has happened to Fatah in the last 17 years of fruitless negotiation is an object lesson they have learnt from. A policy based on seeking the weakest Palestinian leadership to negotiate with Israel is bound to fail. What Palestinians should be collectively gathering is the strongest leadership, and that will only come from starting over.
Whether Hamas is ready to assume the leadership of the Palestinian movement is another matter. If Fatah is falling off the cliff, Hamas still describes itself as being on the first foothold up it. There is a concern about keeping the Islamist movement together as it shifts from resistance only to resistance and negotiation. There are the dangers inherent in stating a clear political goal. In truth, they have stated it three times: a state within the 1967 borders, East Jerusalem as its capital, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees – all this framed by a hudna, or ceasefire, not a recognition of the Jewish state of Israel.
But if you had asked Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness in 1985 whether they would have been prepared to sit down with unionists in what Republicans would have called a partitionist assembly, they would have looked at you in disbelief. It eventually happened, without the long-term aim of a united Ireland being abandoned. If it assumes this role, Hamas is only at the start of a journey that both the ANC and Sinn Féin were a long way down before they were able to deliver peace.
How Israel planned Flotilla attack: Lia Tarachansky on Real News
As the MV Rachel Corrie, the last boat in the Free Gaza Movement’s Flotilla, is scheduled to reach the Gaza shores on Saturday, Israel continues to react to its attack on Monday morning. Protests have been taking place throughout Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories. In the meantime, The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky investigates how Israel prepared for the Flotilla attack, and how the media repeatedly portrayed a connection between the activists and terrorism. After the attack, Israel went on the offensive to prove there was indeed a connection to terrorism. The IDF published a press release saying the activists on board the Mavi Marmara ship that was the site of at least 9 deaths on Monday morning were actually al Qaeda mercenaries. When Tarachansky and journalist Max Blumenthaul questioned the IDF for evidence of this allegation, the IDF said it didn’t have any and changed the title of the press release to “attackers of the IDF soldiers found without identification papers.”
Israeli forces board the Rachel Corrie: The Guardian
• Navy personnel meet no resistance
• Gaza-bound aid ship diverted to Israeli port of Ashdod
Saturday 5 June 2010 11.22 BST
Israeli forces have boarded the Gaza-bound aid ship the MV Rachel Corrie and are taking it to Ashdod port in Israel.
Navy personnel entered the cargo ship from the sea. The operation took only a few minutes, Israeli army spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Avital Leibovich said. No one was reported hurt.
“The ship has been boarded and there was full compliance from the crew and passengers on board,” she said.
The move, also confirmed by the Irish department of foreign affairs, came after Israel warned that its troops would enter the vessel unless it changed course to head away from Gaza.
It says it will question those on board at Ashdod, the BBC reported.
The Irish-Malaysian ship the Rachel Corrie is one of the last remaining ships on the flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza.
It was still attempting to reach the blockaded territory despite the deadly commando attack by Israeli troops earlier in the week, and has rejected calls for it to unload its cargo in Israel.
Nine people died and hundreds of activists were seized and taken to Israel when troops stormed a flotilla of nine ships on Monday morning.
The Irish foreign affairs minister, Micheal Martin, earlier said he fully accepted the organisers’ decision to continue with their mission.
“If, as is their stated intention, the Israeli government intercepts the Rachel Corrie, the government demands that it demonstrate every restraint,” he warned.
“Those on board the Rachel Corrie have made clear their peaceful intentions and have stated that they will offer no resistance to Israeli forces.
“Based on these assurances, there can be no justification for the use of force against any person on board the Rachel Corrie.”
According to the Free Gaza movement, the Rachel Corrie had been tailed by three Israeli naval boats around 35 miles off the coast of Gaza.
Speaking last night, Derek Graham, first mate on the Rachel Corrie, said: “We are nervous, and people have started to get a little bit more anxious.
“But all we want to do is bring our aid in, unload it and come back out. We want to show the Palestinians that they can get in and out of their own country.”
Passengers issued a defiant message through the Free Gaza website: “Communication is difficult and sometimes impossible, and there are many rumours out there started by Israeli authorities, but there is no way we are going to Ashdod,” they said in a joint statement. “We are, for sure, on our way to Gaza.”
The Rachel Corrie, named after a 23-year-old American killed in Gaza in 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer, fell behind the original fleet after mechanical problems. Those aboard suspect it may have been sabotaged.
Communicating with those on board, among whom is the Nobel peace prize laureate Máiread Maguire, has proved difficult.
“They want to get in during daylight tomorrow,” said Martin O’Quigley of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign. “They don’t want to approach the exclusion zone in darkness.”
Maguire said the activists were determined to press on, but would offer no resistance should they be boarded.
“We will sit down,” she told the Associated Press in a telephone interview from the ship. “They will probably arrest us … but there will be no resistance.”
The White House has said Israel’s blockade of Gaza is unsustainable but urged the Rachel Corrie to sail to Ashdod.
“The current arrangements are unsustainable and must be changed. For now, we call on all parties to join us in encouraging responsible decisions by all sides to avoid any unnecessary confrontations,” Mike Hammer, a spokesman for the US national security council, said in a statement.
“In the interest of the safety of all involved, and the safe transmission of assistance to the people of Gaza, we strongly encourage those on board the Rachel Corrie and other vessels to sail to Ashdod to deliver their materials to Gaza.”
The Rachel Corrie is carrying 11 passengers, including the Scottish Captain Eric Harcis.
In addition to six British and Irish citizens on the ship, there are six Malaysians, including an MP, and a team of journalists, organisers said. Ram Karthigasu, a spokesman for the Malaysian travellers, said they were “determined” to continue the journey towards Gaza.
The ship is carrying school supplies, printing paper, children’s shoes, wheelchairs, sports equipment and fire extinguishers. Its load was checked by the Irish government before it sailed, according to organisers.
Israel bars cement and other building materials from entering Gaza, saying they are often used for building tunnels to smuggle in weapons and explosives.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, today said Israel’s blockade of Gaza was illegal and should be lifted. She repeated calls for an investigation into Israel’s raid on aid supply ships this week.
“International humanitarian law prohibits starvation of civilians as a method of warfare and … it is also prohibited to impose collective punishment on civilians,” Navi said.
‘MY FLOTILLA DAUGHTER IS VERY BRAVE’: Islington Tribune
Mum tells of her pride in woman on raided Palestine aid boat
Published: 04 June 2010
by JOSH LOEB
THE mother of an Islington woman who was part of the Palestinian aid flotilla stormed by Israeli troops last night praised her daughter’s courage.
Alex Harrison, 32, from the Marquess Estate off Essex Road, was on one of the boats boarded by soldiers as they attempted to deliver goods to the war-torn Gaza Strip on Monday. At least nine people were killed during the incident.
The former civil servant, who was based at the immigration courts on Rosebery Avenue, was taken off the vessel by Israeli commandoes and held in a prison for three days before being deported yesterday (Thursday). She is expected to arrive back at Heathrow at 10am today.
Alex’s mother Sandra Law said: “She’s very passionate and was determined to go even though she knew the risk. My husband spoke briefly to her. She was very upset about the people killed. She was also angry that the Israelis had confiscated everything leaving her with just the clothes she stood in.
“She was hungry and covered in bruises from being manhandled by soldiers on the boat but says all that was minor compared to what happened to some of the others.”
It is the second time Ms Harrison has seen the inside of a jail after trying to deliver aid to Gaza – last year she was seized and held in a cockroach-infested cell in Israel for six days after joining a flotilla backed by American organisation the Free Gaza Movement.
Mrs Law said: “My husband and myself are both extremely proud of Alex. She is very brave and prepared to stand up for her principles.
“She and her colleagues went through an awful lot last year but decided that they would go again. Few picked up the story last year up apart from the Islington Tribune.”
Gaza suffered heavy bombing from Israel in 2008 and has been under an Israeli blockade since the militant Islamist group Hamas took control there in 2007.
Before leaving the UK early last month, Ms Harrison told the Tribune she would be taking humanitarian supplies to the territory.
“We will try to bring aid and humanitarian supplies that are on Israel’s banned list,” she said. “We are also bringing educational materials and materials to help the reconstruction.”
Ms Harrison said she had become involved in the Free Gaza Movement after reading about the killing of Tom Hurndall in 2003, a pro-Palestinian activist from Tufnell Park who was shot by an Israeli soldier while acting as a human shield in the Gaza Strip.
Speaking at a press conference held yesterday at the TUC headquarters off Tottenham Court Road, Sarah Colborne, a passenger on the Mavi Marmara, on which the nine activists died – described how she had seen a man who had been shot. She added: “He was in a very bad state and died subsequently.”
Ms Colborne, who is the director of the Holloway-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said she hoped the deaths would bring wider recognition of Israel’s “crimes” against the Palestinians.
She added: “I hope this will not be in vain and that this will act as a wake-up call to governments including our government. Israel has been used to acting with impunity and violating international law. That situation has to change now.”
Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn, who was also at the press conference, said he was “shocked and outraged” by Israel’s behaviour.
“I hope that the UK government has already protested in the strongest possible terms to Israel on this attack, in international waters, on vessels carrying aid to the people of Gaza,” he added.
“I visited Gaza earlier this year as part of a pan-European Parliamentary delegation and we saw for ourselves the continuing destruction from ‘Operation Cast Lead’, the shortages of medicines and vital supplies and the isolation and imprisonment of the people.”
Islington South and Finsbury MP Emily Thornberry said: “The eyes of the world have moved off Gaza and there have been the most terrible injustices there. There has to be proper international pressure on Israel. Alex Harrison has my full support.”
Baroness Meral Ece, a former councillor who is of Turkish descent, said the Turkish community in Islington were outraged by what had happened. She said: “The majority of the people killed were Turkish. It’s shocking what they’ve done.”
Throughout the week, pro-Palestinian campaigners from Islington Friends of Yibna took to the streets outside the Israeli Embassy in Kensington, unfurling a home-made banner with Alex Harrison’s name it.
The organisation’s chairwoman, Yael Kahn, said: “This massacre is the result of the appeasement policies towards Israel. The siege won’t be lifted unless the world stops its appeasement of this terrorist state.”
The Israeli Embassy in London said the activists on the Mavi Marmara had attacked Israeli soldiers with clubs and knives – something those onboard have denied.
A statement released to the press by the embassy said Israel regretted the loss of life.
• Islington Friends of Yibna will be holding a meeting on Monday (June 7) at 7.30pm at a location near to Highbury and Islington station, which may be attended by Alex Harrison. For details call 07880 731865.
Sweden ports to block Israel ships, goods in response to Gaza flotilla takeover: Haaretz
Week-long ban is initiated by Swedish Port Workers Union, who says act is reaction to the ‘unprecedented criminal attack on the peaceful ship convoy.’
Swedish dockworkers will launch a weeklong blockade of Israeli ships and goods arriving in the Nordic nation to protest Monday’s attack on a Gaza-destined aid flotilla.
Nine activists died after Israeli troops intercepted the convoy.
Swedish Port Workers Union spokesman Peter Annerback says workers will refuse to handle Israeli goods and ships during the June 15-24 blockade. The union has some 1,500 members and supports Ship to Gaza, which took part in the flotilla.
It says the reason for the blockade is “the unprecedented criminal attack on the peaceful ship convoy.”
It was unclear Saturday how much the blockade would affect trade between the two countries since the union still needs to identify cargos with Israeli origin.
Earlier Saturday, thousands of Australian demonstrators flocked to Sydney’s Town Hall Saturday to protest Israel’s lethal raid on a flotilla headed for Gaza last week.
An Israeli flag was burnt as demonstrators mostly from Sydney’s large Turkish and Lebanese communities railed against the Jewish state.
Huseyin Erbis, 28, told Australia’s AAP news agency that Israel deserved international censure for the blockade of Gaza and its effect on Palestinians.
“They criticize the Muslims but really our prophet was always kind to the Jewish people,” he said.
The Sydney protest was replicated in cities around Australia.
Anti-U.S., Israel demonstrations had also taken palce in several New Zealand cities, as Pro-Palestinian protestors set fire to flags of
Israel and the United States.
The throwing of shoes has become a symbol of opposition to US and Israeli policy in the Middle East, following the example of an Iraqi journalist who threw one at then-president George W Bush during a press conference in December 2008.
“The sole of the shoe is dirty and holding it up that to a person or a place is an insult,” John Minto, protest leader of the Global Peace and Justice organisation, told reporters.
He said it was the Middle East equivalent of the biggest traditional insult of New Zealand’s indigenous Maoris – baring the buttocks
Up to 300 protestors marched through Auckland urging the government to expel Israel’s ambassador in protest at last week’s action by Israeli forces against a peace flotilla en route to Gaza.
Similar demonstrations were reported in Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.
A Global Civil Society Campaign to De-Legitimise Israel?: ipsnews
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 4, 2010 (IPS) – If, as expected, the U.N. Security Council remains politically impotent and refuses to penalise Israel for the killings of nine pro-Palestinian civilians on a ship carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, what is the next course of action?
A global civil society campaign to de-legitimise Israel? Formal or informal sanctions by individual states? Worldwide arrest warrants?
All of these – and more – are in the realm of possibility, say two leading constitutional experts, Professor Richard Falk, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Michael Ratner, president of the New York- based Centre for Constitutional Rights.
The gridlock in the Security Council is likely to remind civil society forces that justice for the Palestinians will depend on bottom-up conflict resolution, and a global delegitimising campaign that worked so well in the struggle to defeat South African racism, Falk told IPS.
Asked how Israel could be punished and/or penalised for its atrocities – if action is to be taken outside the Security Council chambers – Falk said there are two sets of punitive responses outside of the U.N. system.
First, by strong diplomatic initiatives, as for instance, the deterioration of Israeli trade and security relations with Turkey, and others; and by some governments adopting informal or formal sanctions – again the South Africa analogy is relevant, he said.
Secondly, by civil society initiatives that move toward further de-legitimisation of Israel, such as a citizen tribunal on Israeli aggression on the high seas or slow genocide in Gaza; an intensifying campaign fueled by outrage, including the failure of the United Nations to uphold international law in relation to Israel, said Falk, who is also professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University.
Ratner told IPS the injured citizens from various countries can and should begin criminal prosecutions in their home countries against Israeli officials who ordered this attack in international waters.
“Worldwide arrest warrants should be issued. Israeli officials should understand that they may have impunity in Israel, but that they leave Israel at their peril,” he said.
The Israeli attack on the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid, which resulted in the killings of nine Turkish nationals, has provoked anger and protests worldwide.
According to news reports, there were more than 600 civilians from 32 countries on board the six ships which flew the flags of Turkey, Greece and Comoros.
But after a 12-hour session Monday, the Security Council issued a tame “presidential statement” condemning what has been described by critics as “high seas piracy and banditry”.
The United States, which has traditionally thrown a protective arm around Israel – whether the Jewish state is right or wrong – was primarily responsible for “watering down” the statement and refusing to adopt a formal resolution against Israel.
Secure under a protective U.S. umbrella, Israel is unlikely to be singled out for condemnation or even subjected to Security Council sanctions or resolutions.
“Yes, it is likely that Israel will continue to enjoy de facto impunity as a result of Euro-American geopolitical protection,” Falk told IPS.
But he predicted that European support for Israel is likely to be under strain “after such a flagrant disregard of international law and such a cruel and arbitrary use of force”.
Ratner told IPS that “at some point – [and] we may be reaching that point – the anger at Israel by Muslim populations of countries like Turkey and Pakistan, and by extension their anger at the U.S., UK. and France for their continued support in the Security Council for Israeli lawlessness, may force a change.”
This is not because those countries care a whit about Palestinians, he said, but because their security depends on not alienating millions in an area they deem crucial to their economic and physical security.
“So I have not given up hope for increased pressure on Israel from the Security Council,” he said.
The Security Council’s failure to condemn this attack is also part of its failure to act on prior occasions when Israel has violated international law, such as in Gaza, said Ratner. At a minimum, the Security Council should refer this matter to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, he added.
“The Security Council overlooking lawlessness in the past has led to more lawlessness in the future. It has given Israel impunity to carry out horrendous human rights violations,” he noted.
As the Security Council, controlled on this issue by the U.S., the UK and France, protects Israel, “We are seeing the emergence of a remarkable phenomenon: militant activism by thousands from all over the world taking action that is the best hope for forcing a change that could end the blockade, end the settlements and has the potential to bring peace,” he said.
Addressing parliament Wednesday, a visibly angry Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that, “Even despots, gangsters and pirates have specific sensitiveness, (and) follow some specific morals.”
“But those who do not follow any morality or ethics, those who do not act with any sensitivity, to call them such names would even be a compliment to them,” he said.
“This brazen, irresponsible, reckless (Israeli) government that recognises no law and tramples on any kind of humanitarian virtue, this attack by the Israeli government must by all means be punished,” he added.
Referring to the Israeli version of the attack, Erdogan said the government in Tel Aviv, “has made lying its state policy and does not blush about the crime it commits”.
Instead of expecting the Israelis to open an investigation, “the international community must investigate this incident in all its dimensions and must give the legal response”, he added.
Nothing to investigate: Everyone knows what was wrong about the flotilla attack
Israel today is captive to a false sense of victimhood, which goes together with a sense of false omnipotence.
By Merav Michaeli: Haaretz
Once again we are hearing demands that Israel investigate what happened. Not an investigation to check how right or how humane we were in the Gaza flotilla raid, but one intended to discover how and where we went wrong.
Don’t investigate, friends. There is nothing to investigate. The probe will reveal the same things as the ones after the Second Lebanon War, the October 2000 riots, Sabra and Chatila, and even after the Yom Kippur War. It will uncover complacence, arrogance, poor performance, lack of thought, lack of expertise and non-implementation of the lessons of the previous investigation.
The findings become more and more serious between one probe and the next, but the recommendations for fixing the flaws are implemented less and less. Investigations themselves have become just one more ceremony, another of the obsessive rituals Israel has been conducting for years.
Israel is in thrall to a destructive, vicious cycle, like that of a drug addict or a violent man, which repeats itself (with some variations ) at every turn. Each time the cycle becomes shorter, and a suicidal ending seems inevitable at the moment.
It happens like this: Israel uses immense force to attack an immeasurably smaller and weaker entity, which it perceives as nothing less than a dangerous enemy threatening its existence. By attacking, Israel inflicts huge damage to many people, among them the innocent or the presumed innocent, and causes itself enormous damage because the world is furious at it.
Israel once again feels threatened and defends itself by further entrenchment – physical, military and diplomatic. All proposals for change are seen as a threat, and Israel does its best to reject them.
The Jewish people in Zion has in the past been the victim of horrific violence. Israel today is captive to a false sense of victimhood, which goes together with both a sense of false omnipotence and guilt-cum-aggressiveness.
Israel’s belief that it is threatened is so deep-seated that it sees military action against six civilian ships protesting the siege on Gaza as a “clear act of self-defense,” as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the cabinet. Its sense of victimhood runs so deep that it releases film footage showing its most elite soldiers being helplessly beaten, apparently failing to understand the extent to which that impairs its deterrent power.
Israel’s entrenchment is so deep-seated that it has announced it will certainly not lift the blockade on Gaza. Its blindness means that there is sure to be another round.
The Gaza flotilla imbroglio is far from being the most violent action Israel has carried out in 42 years of occupation, and might not even be the stupidest. In many ways, it is very similar to what Israel has been doing every week for the past four years in Bil’in – injuring and killing unarmed civilian protesters who are demanding their basic rights. The storming of the Gaza flotilla is shocking because it makes even more clear what no investigation will reveal: how incredibly blind Israel is, and how deeply this perceptual distortion is embedded in Israel’s politics and leadership.
There is nothing to investigate. This is the situation; everyone knowns it. We just have to decide whether to go on like this, or take a deep breath and choose a different path.
Israeli leaders suspects in Turkish probe: Haaretz
According to Turkish newspaper Zaman, the Istanbul Bakirkoy Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation into Monday’s IDF raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi are the prime suspects in an investigation initiated by the Istanbul Bakirkoy Prosecutor’s Office into Monday’s IDF raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in which nine people, all Turkish citizens, were killed, the Turkish newspaper Zaman reported on Saturday.
According to the report, prosecutor Mehmet Tastan is participating in the investigation. Tastan has met with some of the Turkish activists who were wounded in the incident.
Prosecutors are weighing numerous possible charges, including murder, injury, hostage-taking, attacking Turkish citizens on the open seas and piracy.
The prosecutor’s office intends to use autopsy reports of the dead activists as evidence. The prosecutors would also make use of the findings of an Israeli investigatory committee, if one were to be set up.
The report said that Turkey’s foreign and justice ministries are closely following the investigation.
Did You Know? Gaza
CJPME Gaza video. On December 27, 2008, Israel launched an Assault on the Gaza Strip. The attack of Dec. 27 caused the deadliest one-day death toll in 60 years of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Over 3 weeks, 1,417 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed
A useful video to send to confused people. Has no effect on Zionists – they already knew what they had to know when three years old. They also only care about Jews, other people can be killed at will.
Gaza flotilla activists were shot in head at close range: The Guardian
Exclusive: Nine Turkish men on board Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times, autopsy results reveal
Robert Booth
Israel was tonight under pressure to allow an independent inquiry into its assault on the Gaza aid flotilla after autopsy results on the bodies of those killed, obtained by the Guardian, revealed they were peppered with 9mm bullets, many fired at close range.
Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, which carried out the autopsies for the Turkish ministry of justice today.
The results revealed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back. A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back, said Yalcin Buyuk, vice-chairman of the council of forensic medicine.
The findings emerged as more survivors gave their accounts of the raids. Ismail Patel, the chairman of Leicester-based pro-Palestinian group Friends of al-Aqsa, who returned to Britain today, told how he witnessed some of the fatal shootings and claimed that Israel had operated a “shoot to kill policy”.
He calculated that during the bloodiest part of the assault, Israeli commandos shot one person every minute. One man was fatally shot in the back of the head just two feet in front him and another was shot once between the eyes. He added that as well as the fatally wounded, 48 others were suffering from gunshot wounds and six activists remained missing, suggesting the death toll may increase.
The new information about the manner and intensity of the killings undermines Israel’s insistence that its soldiers opened fire only in self defence and in response to attacks by the activists.
“Given the very disturbing evidence which contradicts the line from the Israeli media and suggests that Israelis have been very selective in the way they have addressed this, there is now an overwhelming need for an international inquiry,” said Andrew Slaughter MP, a member of the all party group on Britain and Palestine.
Israel said tonight the number of bullets found in the bodies did not alter the fact that the soldiers were acting in self defence. “The only situation when a soldier shot was when it was a clearly a life-threatening situation,” said a spokesman for the Israeli embassy in London. “Pulling the trigger quickly can result in a few bullets being in the same body, but does not change the fact they were in a life-threatening situation.”
Protesters from across the country will tomorrow march from Downing Street to the Israeli embassy to call for Israel to be held to account for its actions.
Earlier this week, William Hague, the foreign secretary, said the government would call for an inquiry under international auspices if Israel refuses to establish an independent inquiry, including an international presence.
The autopsy results were released as the last of the Turkish victims was buried.
Dr Haluk Ince, the chairman of the council of forensic medicine in Istanbul, said that in only one case was there a single bullet wound, to the forehead from a distant shot, while every other victim suffered multiple wounds. “All [the bullets] were intact. This is important in a forensic context. When a bullet strikes another place it comes into the body deformed. If it directly comes into the body, the bullet is all intact.”
He added that all but one of the bullets retrieved from the bodies came from 9mm rounds. Of the other round, he said: “It was the first time we have seen this kind of material used in firearms. It was just a container including many types of pellets usually used in shotguns. It penetrated the head region in the temple and we found it intact in the brain.”
An unnamed Israeli commando, who purportedly led the raid on the Mavi Marmara, today told Israeli news website Ynet News that he shot at a protester who approached him with a knife. “I was in front of a number of people with knives and clubs,” he said. “I cocked my weapon when I saw that one was coming towards me with a knife drawn and I fired once. Then another 20 people came at me from all directions and threw me down to the deck below …
“We knew they were peace activists. Though they wanted to break the Gaza blockade, we thought we’d encounter passive resistance, perhaps verbal resistance – we didn’t expect this. Everyone wanted to kill us. We encountered terrorists who wanted to kill us and we did everything we could to prevent unnecessary injury.”
Tonight the Rachel Corrie, an Irish vessel crewed by supporters of the Free Gaza movement, remained on course for Gaza. Yossi Gal, director general at the Israeli foreign ministry, said Israel had “no desire for a confrontation” but asked for the ship to dock at Ashdod, not Gaza.
“If the ship decides to sail the port of Ashdod, then we will ensure its safe arrival and will not board it,” he said.